AFRICA: Mali President on Northern Region’s Woes

Completely Lawless.

Mali’s President Keita at an African-European summit in Dakar in April
(Republic of Mali website)

Before heading home from the U.S.-Africa Business Forum that ended Wednesday (August 6), President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Keita told an overflow crowd at CSIS Thursday (August 7)  that international intervention – especially military logistics — had helped bring his country back from the brink following a 2012 military coup and rebellion in Mali’s northern deserts by nomadic Tuaregs and radical Islamist militants. But the threat to Mali, the region and the world isn’t over, Keita warned. “We’re at a strategic nexus. This is a completely lawless region,” Keita said, according to simultaneous translation of his remarks given in French.

Compounding the problem in the north — an area bigger than Texas — a flow of heavy weapons out of neighboring Libya, and Tuareg mercenaries who know how to use them, after the fall of Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

Mali and its neighbors
(CIA World Factbook)

For more on Keita’s talk at CSIS, see an UPDATE to yesterday’s AROUND AFRICA blog posting.